Max Collins - Girl Most Likely

This was the first any of the interviewees had inquired about the significance of the second week in August. And the Logan murder had not yet been connected to Astrid Lund’s in the media.

“Another classmate,” Krista said, seeing no reason to keep a lid on it, “who you may recall... Sue Logan?”

“Yes, I remember Sue. She was on the basketball team when you were, Krista. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes. Well, she was murdered, too. On the Thursday of the second week of last August. Very similar circumstances.”

The hazel eyes grew large and began welling with tears. “How terrible. How perfectly... is the same person responsible?”

“We don’t know. We think it likely, but we don’t know.”

“So... where we were, what we did, in August... you were asking for an alibi?”

Krista thought about how to answer that, then finally just said, “Yes.”

The gym teacher sat and stared for a few moments.

Then Krista asked, “Did you speak to Astrid at the reunion?”

She nodded. “Yes. Just briefly.”

“What did you say exactly?”

“Just... that I was proud of her.”

The woman began to cry.

Krista handed her a tissue and waited for a while. Then: “You and Astrid were close, I believe.”

“We... we were. I guess you could say I was a kind of... mentor.”

Krista took air in and let it out. Sat forward.

“Mrs. Bragg, I’m going to ask you about something, and if it makes you uncomfortable, I understand. I won’t ask you about it again, unless it becomes a necessary element in the investigation.”

The gym teacher swallowed. Her eyes were red. “That sounds rather... ominous.”

“There’s a rumor, and it is just a rumor... for now... that you and Astrid were seen in the shower together, in the gym dressing room.”

The woman’s face turned white as a blister. But she did not deny it, instead saying, “The girls shower together frequently. On occasion I’m among them. If I’ve... worked up a sweat.”

“This wasn’t a group of girls. Reportedly, it was just you and Astrid. You were soaping her back. Though nothing overtly sexual was seen, there was a shared intimacy.”

Her chin came up, but trembling. “You were one of my girls. Did I ever... touch you or say anything to you, inappropriate?”

“No.”

“Every girls’ gym teacher has these kind of mean things said about her. It’s a cruel cliché. I’m a married woman!”

“You would characterize your relationship with Astrid as...”

“It was not a relationship! She was a girl who needed support after a... after a troubling incident. I joined her in the shower and washed her back and comforted her. This was after an evening practice where she hadn’t shown up. Astrid came in late, after all the girls were gone and I was just getting ready to take a shower myself. She came in, crying, and I helped her. Helped her undress. Took her into the shower and, yes, I washed her and I comforted her.”

“What troubling incident?”

“It was what you would probably call... date rape.”

The Coq D’or, midafternoon, was not hopping, which was okay with Keith. Drinks and casual meals shared here with Karen over the years were enough to keep him company, the kind of memories that could warm a cold, windy February day. The narrow, low-ceilinged bar, snugged away on the ground level of the Drake as if to utilize a spare hallway, claimed to have been the second such establishment to open for business the day Prohibition ended. He believed it.

He had two dates here tonight. One was later, with a beautiful woman. The other wasn’t.

Keith walked past the low-riding tables with their white tablecloths and red leather chairs and selected a high-backed stool at the long, half-a-wall’s worth of bar. An ancient bartender in a black vest, white shirt, and black tie nodded in recognition, though it had been a year since Keith and Karen had last visited.

“Heineken?” the white-haired relic asked.

“No Carlsberg?”

“Still no Carlsberg, sir.”

“Heineken.”

The bartender went to get that and Keith glanced around. The familiar place comforted him — the wainscoting, the French murals, the red leather banquettes.

The Heineken arrived and the bartender poured it. “Alone today?”

“A friend is joining me.”

“Not the lovely lady?”

“Passed away last September.”

“... Life is sweet, life is cruel.”

“Who said that?”

“Me.”

The two men exchanged weary smiles. They didn’t make bartenders like this anymore. Of course, the old boy could be both sweet and cruel himself, as Keith had seen him treat many a customer down the bar with surly resignation.

The man in a trench coat — style topcoat came in looking like a detective, a well-dressed one, which is what he was, and how he intended to look. Lt. Barney Davis of the Chicago Homicide Bureau — some years ago a detective with Keith in Dubuque — might have been Sam Spade in pursuit of a dame or maybe Eliot Ness after a keg to empty, one way or another.

As if that weren’t enough, Barney looked a little like Jack Webb, in the fading days of Dragnet — a sixtyish, slightly puffy-faced guy who’d seen every awful thing men could do to each other and had traveled from the moral indignation of the young to the contemptuous boredom of the middle-aged.

The homicide detective settled onto the stool. “You know what they charge for beers in this rarefied dive?”

“I’m paying.”

“That helps.” Then a smile blossomed on the lumpy face and Barney slipped an arm around Keith for half a hug. “You look skinny.”

“You don’t.”

“You’re a ways from Galena.”

“Astrid Lund was a ways from Chicago. But maybe you can help me see if her murder started here.”

Barney sighed. “About five hundred humans got murdered in this town last year. We have about four hundred less detectives on the CPD than we did ten years ago — less than a thousand now — and you think I need a Galena murder to give me something to do?... You’re supposed to be retired.”

“We went over that on the phone.”

“I’ll say again, you should let your daughter handle this. Be a proud papa. You delivered a bouncing baby police chief. Go about your business, which is no business. And certainly no business of mine.”

“Finished?”

“Yeah.”

The bartender, waiting for a lull in the conversation, came over and Barney also ordered a beer — a Budweiser. No accounting for taste.

Keith said, “Alex Cannon was a classmate of Astrid’s.”

The seen-it-all eyes studied him. “Okay, now that’s interesting.”

“He met yesterday, at his Naperville home, two clients — first, Daniel Rule, contractor of buildings. Second, Sonny Salerno, contractor of... contracts.”

“Not together, I trust.”

“Not together. Well, separate meetings anyway. My question is, are they together, in any way? Or was that just an attorney meeting at home with two separate clients who didn’t care to be seen at his office?”

The Budweiser arrived. Barney made a motion to the bartender that meant he’d pour it himself.

“Is Daniel Rule connected?”

Barney asked, as he poured, “You do know this is Chicago we’re sitting in, don’t you? Not that the Outfit is what it was. You know what the Organized Crime Bureau mostly handles these days? Black and brown gang activity, as it pertains to drug trafficking and local gunrunning. These Outfit guys, drugs were never their thing, and gambling is all but over — who needs it illegal when the state is in the business? Some bookmaking goes on, sure, and of course loansharking.”